Reliable Shopping Reviews and Product Scores: Interview with Joe Dieter, CEO of Wisely.
Wisely provides a one-of-a-kind platform for obtaining the smartest buyer opinions and product ratings. In an exclusive interview with TechBullion, CEO Joe Dieter elaborates on his company’s plans.
Hello, Joe. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Explain more about Wisely, its services, and the inspiration for the shopping tool you developed for us.
Wisely is a more straightforward, yet more dependable, method of obtaining a trusted, final response on which things are worth purchasing. We analyze and compile hundreds of the most helpful and credible buyer reviews and opinions from across the web into a single product score as well as bite-size purchasing advice for you to use when shopping. Beyond the typical 5-star review, our score provides a more democratized view of what is being said than the traditional 5-star review. Known as the “J.D. Power of the Internet,” Wisely has also been referred to as “Honey on Steroids.”
When you shop on Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, the Wisely browser extension provides you with scores and product highlights throughout your shopping experience. Using Wisely’s technology, we’ve evaluated over a million voices about thousands of different devices such as TVs, smartphones, headphones, smart speakers, tablets, and smartwatches, with insights being updated every week.
Wisely’s the core team has extensive experience in developing consumer products for both large and small companies. As a result of our professional experience, we identified a market requirement for a solution that would provide shoppers with useful information throughout their buying journey.
Shopper opinions are widely shared on the internet, according to the research team’s observations. There are thousands of customer evaluations across a variety of e-commerce platforms, hundreds of press reviews, and millions of consumers speaking out on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We realized that it would be very hard for a single shopper to browse through all of this information promptly. While someone can absorb all of this information, they may not wish to do so because some sources are not actual buyers and some are complex advertisements paid for by a brand or retailer.
Finally, shoppers purchase specific things for a variety of reasons. Within most product categories, we don’t merely buy the cheapest goods or stick with a single brand; there is nuance to the buying criteria of each individual in most product categories. We discovered that many product evaluation systems were not considering these real-world considerations.
Wisely was founded by Dale Almasy, co-founder and chief technology officer, and myself because we believe there is a better approach to enlighten shoppers everywhere.
Wisely is currently available for download and use on Google Chrome, and it can be found here.
Why is it more vital than ever before to obtain shopper opinions and reliable ratings these days?
It has always been crucial for consumers to be able to get the most helpful and reputable product opinions when they are doing their shopping. We simply haven’t had a solution that effectively met the demand, let alone one that was easily accessible at the moment of purchase, until now.
Because of the e-commerce boom that has occurred this year, resourceful solutions such as Wisely are becoming increasingly crucial. Everyone, from all walks of life, is increasingly opting to make the majority of their shopping decisions digitally, whether it’s for paper towels, peanut butter, televisions, or anything else. In addition, more buyers are taking the time to provide reviews on the websites they visit. Product categories that previously did not receive a large number of shopper reviews are now doing so.
In comparison to 5 years ago, much alone a year ago, the internet purchasing audience of today buys differently. A new generation of online purchasing experiences is needed, and the time has come to implement them. It is past time for a buying experience that is more informative, transparent, and individualized. Buyers, regardless of their level of sophistication, should be armed with information that steers them to the most appropriate product for their needs.
However, it’s vital to remember that the market has been stuck in the horse and buggy mode of operation for decades, regardless of the date 2020 is set. The vast majority of tech product shoppers take the time to read 5-star product reviews from 2-3 retailers before making a purchasing decision. They then read a couple of press reviews, and a significant number of shoppers even lookup trending sentiment on a social media platform before making their purchase. Some individuals entirely rely on the 5-star rating of one major eCommerce platform, thumbing through reviews on their phone while they stand in the middle of a store aisle, to make their purchasing decision. There is currently no way for shoppers to tell how many biassed, motivated, bot-generated opinions are influencing the information they gather before making a purchase, regardless of where they land on the spectrum of clever pre-buy research. Furthermore, because evaluations generally cover a wide range of issues, there is nuance in determining how much a customer should pay attention to particular ratings over others.
An obvious example is the statement “this phone sucks,” which isn’t nearly as helpful as a multi-paragraph review of the latest iPhone that discusses each new feature in detail. If you read through each 5-star review of a product, you’ll see a wide range of opinions, from really useful to absolutely unhelpful. The reality is that when it comes to evaluating genuine product experiences across features, factors, specifications, and use-cases, a subset of evaluations on most items isn’t very content or context-rich.
Because of the 5-star review, we were able to transition out of an era in which the maker or seller had entire control. Once upon a time, a brand with a larger advertising budget, but not necessarily a better product, could monopolize or otherwise exert influence over a market. We’ve discovered a more democratized way for buyers to make educated purchasing selections, among other things, thanks to the product review. Our curiosity about the power of product reviews was piqued, and we had a lot of questions about them. Our investigation revealed various less than optimal methods in which a single platform’s 5-star review can influence consumers based on an unrelated motive or irrelevant criterion that is used to judge the review.
What is the extent and amount of demand for a rating platform such as Wisely, and what is the size of the market?
Before making a purchase choice on a tech device, it is estimated that over 65 million “digital natives” consult a variety of review, social, and media sites for product opinions. While we believe that this type of pre-purchase research occurs mostly with pricey technology products, we believe that it is also occurring in other categories, such as home care/cleaning products, specialty foods, and beverages, toiletries, cosmetics, OTC health products, and more.
Due to the increasing number of buyers who are purchasing the majority of the products in their lives online, the quantity and variety of audiences conducting pre-purchase scrutiny will expand in 2020. In terms of revenue, there has been a significant increase in eCommerce. More individuals are opting to make their shopping decisions digitally, and more buyers are taking the time to leave reviews on a variety of products, not just tech products, according to a recent study.
Consequently, e-commerce must become more efficient and sophisticated in how it caters to shoppers, independent of their prior expertise, to remain competitive. Buyers, regardless of their level of sophistication, should be armed with information that steers them to the most appropriate product for their needs.
Is Wisely able to tell you when a new piece of technology is being marketed or released? If that’s the case, could you please tell us more about it and how it works?
To analyze new tech products (within a product category of current coverage), our system gathers product opinion every week and then do multi-tiered analysis on that information based on reliability and relevance weighting factors, as well as other considerations.
What is the process by which the most recent product opinion is created weekly, and why is this important?
During a given week, our technology will discover and analyze the most recent reviews that have been posted on the site. For a variety of reasons, we must keep our insights up to date frequently. Our mission is to provide shoppers with the most up-to-date, relevant, and trustworthy information possible. The evolution of product opinions is because product performance and specifications change throughout time.
For example, a popular smartphone released several years ago received some of the highest product ratings of any phone released that year in initial long-form press evaluations, making it one of the most successful smartphones ever. The battery, on the other hand, developed a fault and began bursting. Consumer evaluations and ratings, as well as attitudes on social media, have all fallen. Despite this, numerous press reviews rated the phone as one of the best available.
The fact that Wisely is among the first to precisely recognize when there is a shift in general sentiment toward a product or brand is extremely crucial to the company. In addition to the ebb and flow of public opinion, there is a constant evolution of a certain product category that must be taken into consideration. When you look at how customers talked about smartphones 10 years ago, much alone 5 years ago, and compare that conversation to how consumers talk about smartphones today, you’d think they were talking about completely different product categories. But that’s not the case.
- In response to the evolving consumer discourse and product evolution, Wisely scores and insights will vary as a result.
- More information on the text and source analysis on Wisely, including the elements involved, would be appreciated.
- Natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and artificial intelligence are all used by the Wisely insight system to assess widespread shopper opinion.
- As soon as a new tech product is introduced, our system collects multi-source product opinion every week and then does multi-tiered analysis on that information based on factors such as reliability and relevancy.
- The result is a product score as well as thousands of unique buying advice for each product. To give you an idea of the power of the system, Wisely discovered that the vast majority of Amazon reviews (over 70%) only mention two or fewer product features, indicating that the vast majority of them are not helpful during the purchasing process. As a result, we have increased the weighting of evaluations that are rich in features and use-cases.
- Since the COVID outbreak, online buying has been increasingly popular. What shopping advice do you have for those who prefer to purchase on the internet?
Over the past year, there has been a tremendous increase in eCommerce activity. Our tool is great buying advice for people who are looking to buy something. Whatever review system you’re looking at is likely built on top of a single platform’s review system, which is comprised of members of that platform’s community. The finest piece of advice we can provide shoppers is to seek out opinions from not only a variety of forums but also from genuine customers. They can gain access to this type of information through the Wisely shopping tool.
Could you tell us more about your customer service and the security precautions you have in place to ensure accurate results?
The opinions and feedback of our customers are extremely valuable to us. For us to improve our shopping tool, we ask that everyone who uses it also provides feedback through our shopper response system. We’re keeping an ear out for which additional product categories and product insights customers would most want to see from our tool, so please let us know.
We’re excited about the prospect of expanding the breadth and depth of our product scores and insights continuously. Throughout the coming months, our score and insights will include data from more sources, as well as weighting factors that will assist in prioritizing truly reliable and more informative sources of information. In addition, with each passing month, our shopping tool will include more product categories that will provide useful insights into the products that are being purchased.
What’s next for Wisely and his team?
In the coming months, we’ll be introducing a product suggestion system within our tool that will direct shoppers to higher-rated products that may be the best fit for their specific requirements at the time of purchase. The community scores of different eCommerce consumers (Walmart versus Target), as well as pricing and value ratings, are also being revealed.
Is there anything more you’d like to say?
Please take the time to download and test the Wisely shopping tool over the following few months while you are out shopping for your preferred consumer electronics.
A social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn has recently been established, and we will be giving views on the most thoroughly researched products within.
